Christine Harold, OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate
Control of Culture

Review by Sheana Director

Christine Harold. OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate
Control of Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. 232pp.

[1] When I was first offered the opportunity
to write a review of OurSpace, I
expected – as I'm sure some others will in first considering the book
– an extensive analysis of the community website MySpace. While Christine Harold does briefly touch on MySpace, her
book is more far-reaching in scope. In OurSpace,
Harold explores the phenomenon of "culture jamming" through a sophisticated
synthesis of counter-cultural productions and interventions with theorists from
Michel Foucault to Gilles Deleuze and others. Tracing the practice of culture
jamming from 1950's protests of Charlie Chaplin through the emergence of the
Creative Commons project in the 2000's, Harold outlines the various ways in
which activists have intervened in (and often, collaborated with) corporate
cultures to challenge ideas about ownership, anti-corporate activism, and
"consuming" publics.

[2] In the Introduction to the text, Harold
offers a robust review of scholarship on counter-corporate resistance. She
gives a brief discussion of Rupert Murdoch's purchase of MySpace and the
ensuing backlash from the site's members, revealing how contemporary
corporations are increasingly focused on infiltrating the "indie," and even
anti-corporate scene. Following this review, she highlights various theorists
who have contributed to the scholarship on consumerism and culture jamming,
transitioning smoothly from Dery's germinal work on the latter to Michel
Foucault's and Gilles Deleuze's work on disciplinarity and control (xxv-xxviii).
The author does an excellent job of making complex concepts and terminology
accessible, and she sets up a solid framework by incorporating both theory that
supports her claims, and acknowledging those in disagreement with her, such as
Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter's ideas about the ultimate effects of
"counter-cultural 'rebellion'" (xx).

[3] Chapter 1, "Detours and Drifts:
Situationist International and the Art of Resistance," gives a history of
the Situationist movement, focusing on the evolution of their resistance and
the theoretical framework through which such resistances were enacted. These
"grumpy French anarchists," as Harold notes one academic has
described them, were the origins of detournement and derive, two ways of
challenging the (mass-)mediated and corporate cultures of the period (3). She gives substantial attention to the
French theorist Guy Debord, who led the Situationist International from the
late 1950's to the early 1970's. Debord wrote extensively on the concepts of
"detournement" – "a detouring of preexisting Spectacular
messages and images in an effort to subvert and reclaim them"; and
"drift" – "an attempt to make
strange one's position in the Spectacle of commercial propaganda" (15).
While SI may have seemed peculiar to the period in which they were active,
Harold successfully demonstrates that their ideas took hold in ensuing activism
and theorizing on media, culture and publics, and that contemporary
anti-corporate activists like Adbusters can trace their philosophical
roots to Debord and the Situationists. Although Harold says the Situationists lapsed into relative
obscurity during the decades following their work, she notes that in recent
academic circles their activism and theories have seen renewed interest -
including, of course, Harold's own scholarship through the rest of the book.

[4] In "Anti-Logos: Sabotaging the Brand through
Parody," Harold discusses the group "Adbusters," who describe themselves as the
"political heirs to the Situationists" (28). Harold discusses the employment of
parody by Adbusters and similar groups, who use it in an effort to "jam the
pop-culture marketers and bring their image factory to a sudden, shuddering
halt" (51-52). Here the text might
benefit from a more extensive critical analysis of the effectiveness of
Adbusters; for example, what makes the sneaker they market – the
"Blackspot" – less of a corporate brand than Nike (and their "Nike
swoosh")? Why do self-proclaimed "progressive" consumers find greater comfort
in buying an "indie"-labeled product than a corporate product? Some further
complication by Harold here would be welcome.

[5] In the final two chapters ("Pirates and
Hijackers: Creative Publics and the Politics of 'Owned Culture'" and "Inventing
Publics: Kairos and Intellectual Property Law"), Harold takes up discussion of
the emerging open source/Creative Commons movement. She highlights the ways
that corporations have attempted to limit the use of copyrighted material, as
well as a series of provocative counter-corporate protests of restrictive
copyright policies. One compelling example highlighted by Harold describes an
artist who successfully received the copyright on the phrase "Freedom of
Speech," and then began a series of lawsuits against those who had "infringed"
upon the trademarked concept. While
Harold offers an interesting analysis of the theoretical implications of
counter-corporate resistance and new ways of thinking about intellectual
property, the text here would benefit from more substantive discussion of the
practical ramifications of such movements; for example, how many in-roads have
creative commons really made? If, as Harold seems to suggest, Creative Commons
truly offers a revolutionary way of rethinking "ownership" and intellectual
freedom, then why isn't this very volume published under such a license?
Perhaps she sees academic publishing as a different beast altogether, or
perhaps this is an example of the "rhetorical jujitsu" she discusses –
except here, instead of redirecting the aims of corporate culture into
subversive activism, she's actually working within the frame of that copyright
to subvert the system itself. If she's playing with these concepts, I'd like to
see more of it – and if not, some frank discussion of why (and when)
copyright should be preserved is needed.

[6] Harold's text elegantly synthesizes
theory, history and popular culture to shed light on the complex and shifting
ways that "consuming publics" are understood. She suggests that, rather than
abstain entirely from consumer culture, that modes of resistance engage said culture, co-opting what is
already available for possibly revolutionary purposes. She offers a refreshing,
thorough and even-handed treatment of some of the major theories on corporate
culture, copyright and the potentially groundbreaking ramifications of new
frameworks for addressing intellectual property. Ultimately, the text poses
several thought-provoking questions, asking us to challenge the way we think
about publics. If, as Harris suggests, we are at least in part defined by that
which we consume, OurSpace may serve
as a guide to navigate the relationship between corporate and
counter-corporate, copyright and open source, and ultimately as a jumping-off
point from which we can rethink ourselves, not as opposed to, but as participating in a give-and-take of
meaning-making with consumer culture. This volume would be a welcome addition
to courses in culture studies, communications, philosophy and new media, and is
written in such a way that it would be a pleasurable read to those interested
in the topics outside of the academy. I thoroughly enjoyed OurSpace and even managed to overcome the very small disappointment
that was the relative lack of discussion about Myspace and social networking
– I'll hope to see those make a bigger appearance in future editions (OurSpace 2.0, perhaps?).